Martin Bouygues, the chairman of the eponymous French conglomerate, has an $11 billion dilemma. At a board meeting scheduled Tuesday, Bouygues will discuss the richly priced offer for its mobile-phone unit from Numericable-SFR, France’s No. 2 telecom group. As Bouygues sizes up the potential cash windfall and the risks that the government or regulators block a deal, the offer crystallizes the strategic challenges ahead for the French family-controlled group. Read More »

The telecom giant has reached a deal with Rural Media Group to carry its rural-oriented television channel RFD-TV on AT&T’s U-verse pay-tv service. AT&T was the only major service provider not carrying the channel and its pending $49 billion takeover of DirecTV had become a lightning rod for viewers sending comments to the FCC over their concerns about losing access to shows like “Equestrian Nation”.

As of Monday, well over half of the 14,000 comments filed to the FCC about the deal mentioned RFD-TV. Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable was also targeted, with close to 17,000 of the 76,000 filings on the deal related to RFD-TV.

The addition of RFD-TV is a change of tune for AT&T, which had cited limited demand by its 5.7 million subscribers, mostly in urban areas, for not carrying the channel. More on this after the jump… Read More »

The NFL has huge leverage in negotiating broadcast rights for games over television networks, which increasingly look to the NFL to help fortify them against the rise of online video services, the stagnation of pay TV and other threats. As reported in a page-one article, power amassed by the NFL has also emboldened the league to carve up new rights to games over and over in different ways. At the same time, NFL officials are launching or expanding numerous online efforts that could undercut traditional TV viewing. Read More »

A new Comcast streaming TV service for college campuses, formally launched Thursday in a handful of schools, holds the promise of reducing schools’ bandwidth costs over time, college officials say.

The service, which includes about 80 live channels and a robust on-demand library that can be streamed to tablets, phones and other devices, doesn’t require a physical set top box and is free for students with their room and board fees. Among schools participating are Lasell College in Massachusetts, University of New Hampshire, Bridgewater College in Virginia and the University of Delaware. More on this after the jump… Read More »

The National Football League may bring in $10 billion in revenue a year, but it is still pinching pennies.

Several weeks ago, as the NFL informed Katy Perry, Rihanna and Coldplay that they were the leading candidates to perform at the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show, the league asked at least some of the acts if they would share some of their future tour income, or make some other financial contribution, in exchange for the gig, according to people familiar with the matter.

The reason: the NFL—which takes in about $5 billion a year from media and television rights deals, according to sports-marketing research firm Navigate Research—was looking for a way to defray the halftime show’s production costs, which have grown to $10 million, up from $8 million a few years ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. More on this after the jump… Read More »

The $80 billion bid by 21st Century Fox for rival media group Time Warner may have been rejected, but few think the hunt is over. With cable and satellite TV companies busy with their own round of consolidation, the biggest producers of films and TV shows are looking to scale up in response. But how big are they trying to become?

When it comes to the most-viewed TV shows and movies, a combined 21st Century Fox / Time Warner would have its fingers in about half of them. Here are the top-rated TV shows of the 2013-14 season and the networks they are shown on, via Entertainment Weekly (three shows are tied for 10th place). We’ve added in brackets if the shows are made by one of the two companies’ TV studios.

LG Electronics is serious about bringing organic light-emitting diode technology to the TV market, despite continued doubts over whether OLED TVs’ bright colors and curvy designs will outweigh a price tag equivalent to that of a subcompact car. Read More »

After a decade of earthbound ratings, the Peacock network has finally taken flight.

NBC will finish the traditional broadcast season as the most-viewed broadcast network among the coveted 18-49 demographic that advertisers care about, the network trumpeted on Tuesday, as well as the second most-viewed network in total viewers, behind CBS. NBC’s performance comes after nine years in fourth place in total viewers, and a third-place ranking last season in the 18-49 demographic that was heralded at the time as an improvement.

NBC’s airing of the Winter Olympics were part of the story, said Tom Bierbaum, vice president of ratings and program information for NBC Entertainment, but not all of it. Even with the 18 days of the Olympics removed from NBC’s performance, it would still have generated the biggest 18-49-year-old audience for the season, he said.

“The Olympics helped a lot, but we don’t depend on them,” he said. More on this after the jump… Read More »

Liberty Media Corp.’s year-long adventure in the U.S. cable industry may be nearing an end.

Liberty’s decision to fully spin off its cable interests, primarily its 26% stake in Charter Communications Inc., into a new company called Liberty Broadband may be the prelude to a complete exit. Longtime Liberty observers will notice that the spin-off looks very similar to Liberty’s 2009 spin-off of its majority stake in DirecTV into a company called Liberty Entertainment.

That spin-off hadn’t been completed before Liberty struck a deal to combine the soon-to-be- separated company it with DirecTV itself. Shareholders in Liberty Media, including Mr. Malone, ended up with shares directly in the satellite TV firm as a result of the complicated series of transactions.